Printed circuit boards have been used for many years in the electrical industry. A typical printed circuit board includes a flat (versus three-dimensional) substrate having a pattern of circuit traces printed or otherwise deposited thereon. Electronic components are electrically coupled to the circuit traces on one or both sides of the flat substrate by solder connections to contact pads of the circuit traces. Often, solder tails from the electrical components are inserted into holes in the flat substrate, and the tails are soldered to the circuit traces on the board and/or in the holes. These solder connections require expensive and often tedious processes. If a solder connection becomes damaged, its repair also is expensive and tedious.
In some electrical fields, such as in the automotive industry, three-dimensional circuit structures have been developed wherein a plurality of stamped and formed conductors are embedded, as by overmolding, in a three-dimensional molded dielectric substrate. The conductors have contact tabs or blades which project from the substrate. In some instances, the blades may be disposed in recesses in the substrate. The molded substrate is designed to permit mounting of electrical devices or parts thereon, such as relays, switches, terminal boards or the like, making required electrical connections between the devices or parts through the conductors embedded in the substrate. Again, expensive and tedious solder connections are used even with such pre-dimensional circuit structures. To avoid the solder connections, expensive and complicated covers have been used over the three-dimensional substrate, or the various electrical devices or parts are connected directly to the formed tabs of the conductors, but these connections typically require female contacts.
The present invention is directed to providing a three-dimensional circuit structure which utilizes novel interface modules to provide an interconnection between the conductors of the circuit structure and the electrical devices or parts connected to the structure. The interface modules are particularly useful as male-to-male interfacing modules.